


The Agnostic

by perihadion



Series: Shadowboxing [11]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mandalorian Culture, let's get Din's thoughts on all this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22537429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/perihadion
Summary: Din considers the ramifications of taking off his helmet, his status as a Mandalorian, and his relationships with Cara and the Child.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Shadowboxing [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599208
Comments: 18
Kudos: 133





	The Agnostic

**Author's Note:**

> Do not comment with Omera hate.

“Love is when you care more for someone else than you do for yourself ... but it’s more than that ... it’s when someone is a part of you.”  
— _Starman_ (1984), Dir. John Carpenter

*

Cool mist cloaked the hills around the Razor Crest. It was a risk for Din to leave the ship with his helmet under his arm (even now, he felt) but he wanted to feel the cold sigh of the earth on his face and breathe it in. The population of this planet was sparse, he could spare a few moments in the open with his eyes closed. He was half-doomed already anyway.

It was raining, he realised. So light it felt like a gossamer veil resting against his skin. He turned his face to the sky.

(How gentle the world could be in moments like this.)

He took one last deep breath and filled his lungs with the scent of wet earth, then he put his helmet on at last and turned to the Child behind him. “What do you think?” he said. “Do you feel any thing?” The Child tilted his head.

He asked this everywhere they went, he thought maybe the Child could sense his kind. Maybe they communicated without talking, maybe the Child could hear or feel something he lacked the sense for. There were creatures in the galaxy whose multifaceted, gemlike eyes could see things in the full spectrum of light that he couldn’t even imagine — an extra shimmering layer of reality resting as lightly on _his_ reality as the veil of rain rested on his skin. Anything seemed possible.

He had to admit that he had limited interest in apprehending this quarry. The credits would be useful but maybe it was time he admitted to himself that he had, in fact, wanted to see Cara — that he had wanted to get things out in the open and resolve them, whatever the cost (and it had been considerable).

The Child grabbed at his cloak and he sighed. Taking the Child with him was less than ideal but he hated to leave him alone. It was unfortunate that IG-11 had perished. The idea of hiring permanent help was also somewhat distasteful. When he had to work, which he tried to make as rarely as possible, he would find a trustworthy local to watch the Child but that was not always possible either. The obvious solution would have been to ask Cara to come with him but, of course, she was not a babysitter.

The light filtering through the woods made them seem bluish, almost dreamlike. He picked the Child up and held him in his arms as he walked.

Who was he now, he wondered. Everything in his life had shifted. Maybe at one point he could have sought counsel from the Armorer but she had left Nevarro after salvaging what beskar remained in the tunnels. He knew that Cara had helped her, had never been able to find the words to express how he felt about that.

The Child squirmed in his arms and he wrapped his cloak around him. The truth was that he didn’t feel forsaken. It had felt natural, inevitable, instinctive. It had felt as natural and instinctive as protecting the Child he cradled in his arms. He felt that he was connected to Cara, maybe that he had always been connected to her. Maybe that was why it didn’t feel like a lie to put the helmet back on, why it felt important that he keep his face hidden from others even now.

(He wondered what Cara knew of Mandalorian marriage, that it was more of a shared feeling of intertwinedness than a formal arrangement, that in some ways they could be considered married already.)

What did it mean that he had taken his helmet off, he wondered. What had stirred inside him and encouraged him to do it. Was it a desire to abandon his Creed for her, or an expression of his feeling that they were already a unit?

Did it really matter? In the end it was simply a feeling; all of this was just a feeling, an impulse inside him. He took his helmet off because, in that moment, it had felt right. He put it back on because, in that moment, it had not felt wrong. He was starting to realise that maybe the Way of the Mandalore was not a singular path but something each person has to forge for themselves, groping their way through the darkness with nothing but their own sense of what it meant to be a Mandalorian to light the way.

Now that the Mandalorians had scattered all he had left to guide him were his own feelings — like a tracking fob which blinked, intermittently, indicating the direction but not the distance nor even the destination.

(“Have you ever removed your helmet?” he heard the Armorer ask. “Has it ever been removed by force?” What would the consequences be if she asked again and he told her the truth? — and, this thought shocking to him, did he care?)

His priorities had changed, he had changed. The things which had seemed so important before now rung — not hollow, but the tone had changed. There was a time when he would gladly have died for the Covert, gladly. There was a time when all he craved was a noble death. For the first time in his life Din feared death not just in the moments where it seemed imminent but at other times: in the still of night as the Child slept the cold hand of fear would clutch at his heart, and his stomach, and a chilling voice would ask what would become of the Child without him.

(As it ebbed away it would ask what would become of Cara, who might live the rest of her life without hearing all the things Din wanted to tell her.)

The tracking fob blinked. He was getting close.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/190617858374/6lD9Rx4S) on tumblr.


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